The government has approved a Tk1,946.22 crore contract with Indonesia’s PT Pertamina Trans Kontinental to operate and maintain the country’s first single-point mooring (SPM) facility at Maheshkhali in Cox’s Bazar, paving the way for regular operations of the long-delayed oil-import infrastructure.
The Cabinet Committee on Government Purchase (CCGP) approved the proposal on Wednesday, with the Energy and Mineral Resources Division placing it before the committee chaired by Finance Minister Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury.
The contract, covering the SPM’s offshore and onshore facilities, marine services and associated equipment, is for five years. The total value, including taxes and duties, is about Tk1,946.22 crore, while the Indonesian company’s bid before tax and VAT was around $128 million.
PT Pertamina Trans Kontinental was selected after an international competitive tender in which three companies submitted bids. The tender evaluation committee found the Indonesian firm technically responsive and the lowest financial bidder.
The other bidders were China Petroleum Pipeline Engineering Company Ltd (CPPEC) and Hong Kong-based Hilong Marine Engineering (Hong Kong) Ltd.
The appointment comes more than two years after the SPM project was completed and commissioned in March 2024. The facility has remained without a regular operations and maintenance contractor for an extended period.
Faster oil unloading
The SPM was built under the Installation of Single Point Mooring with Double Pipeline project to allow large tankers carrying imported crude oil and refined petroleum products to unload directly offshore in the Bay of Bengal.
The project includes a floating SPM buoy about nine kilometres offshore from Maheshkhali, a pipeline-end manifold, offshore and onshore pipelines, and a pumping station and tank farm at Maheshkhali.
The tank farm has three 50,000-cubic-metre crude oil storage tanks and three 30,000-cubic-metre high-speed diesel tanks, along with pumps, metering and pigging facilities, a SCADA system and fire-fighting infrastructure.
The system is designed to transfer crude oil and diesel through separate pipelines to the Maheshkhali storage facilities before onward transportation to Eastern Refinery and other installations in Chattogram.
The government expects the SPM to significantly reduce the time required to unload large tankers. A 100,000-deadweight-tonne tanker, which can currently take around 11 days to unload through the traditional lighterage system, is expected to be handled in about 48 hours through the SPM.
The system will also reduce reliance on lighterage vessels, cutting transportation costs and potential fuel losses while reducing foreign-exchange expenditure. Large tankers cannot enter the Karnaphuli River because of draft restrictions, making the existing lighterage system slower and more costly.
Link to refinery expansion
The SPM is also intended to support the expansion of Eastern Refinery Ltd (ERL). Under the government’s plans, ERL’s crude-processing capacity is expected to rise from 1.5 million tonnes a year to 4.5 million tonnes following the addition of new refining capacity.
The Maheshkhali storage facilities will also increase Bangladesh’s capacity to stock crude oil and diesel, strengthening the security of petroleum supplies.
The SPM project was implemented by ERL on behalf of the Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) under a government-to-government arrangement between Bangladesh and China. German consultancy ILF Consulting Engineers served as the project consultant, while China Petroleum Pipeline Engineering Company Ltd was the EPC contractor.
The project had an approved cost of about Tk8,298 crore. Its first crude-oil shipment was unloaded through the SPM on 3 December 2023, followed by diesel on 7 December. The project was formally commissioned after 30,000 tonnes of diesel and 40,000 tonnes of crude oil were pumped from Maheshkhali to Eastern Refinery in March 2024.
BPC issued the contractor a Taking Over Certificate in August 2024, while the defect notification period ended on 7 August 2026.
The government’s latest decision clears the way for PT Pertamina Trans Kontinental to take over regular operation and maintenance of the facility. The contract is expected to bring the SPM into full-scale service and allow Bangladesh to make greater use of the infrastructure built to modernise its petroleum import and distribution system.
“We are working to make energy supplies more reliable and cost-effective. We will ensure the smooth operation of the Single Point Mooring system by implementing ERL-2 according to schedule,” Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation Chairman Dr Md Rafiqul Islam told Just Energy News. He added that the SPM and ERL-2 projects would help save a significant amount of foreign currency.